The tech (media?) giant is hardly alone in the race; DirecTV, Time Warner Cable, William Morris Endeavor, KKR, Guggenheim Digital and The Chernin Group all seek a piece or all of the pie, Peter Kafka reports. Today, the site is jointly owned by News Corp., Disney and Comcast.

Readers should know that CBS Corp., parent company of ZDNet, has relationships and/or competes with a number of these companies. But that fact is precisely what makes this so interesting: while Hulu isn't a company we would typically cover on these business technology-oriented pages, the potential deal is interesting because it represents Yahoo's increasing move away from by-the-books technology and toward media.

In recent years, both Yahoo and AOL have spent considerable sums of money and time refashioning themselves into businesses that have reputations built on Web 1.0 technology but revenues built on advertising dollars. As with Tumblr, Yahoo's interest in Hulu demonstrates the company's eagerness to own the channels and sell against them.

Which prompts a simple question: What is a "technology company" these days, anyway?

Andrew Nusca is a former writer-editor for ZDNet and contributor to CNET. He is also the former editor of SmartPlanet, ZDNet's sister site about innovation. He writes about business, technology and design now but used to cover finance, fashion and culture. He was an intern at Money, Men's Vogue, Popular Mechanics and the New York Daily Ne...
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